Critic Reviews

Is there anything to dislike? The documentation is minimal, but this is one game where an online manual works well. About the only thing missing is shuffling the cards and picking up the little wooden pieces by hand. And for the added enjoyment that comes with ULTIMATE RISK, that's a sacrifice that even old-timers like me will gladly make.

RISK is an extremely addictive strategy oriented game with a load of options and adjustable gameplay features. This game can definitely absorb a good amount of your time and brain processing power. A typical game of Ultimate RISK with a few players and all of the computer opponents enabled could take a few days to complete! Good thing there is a save feature... I liked the fact that the game was so flexible with the configuration options. You can easily customize each outing to give you a fresh new game each time you play. The computer AI is no slouch either...in hard mode I was continually impressed with the moves that it executed...for the most part. If you love strategy games, especially those that let you include up to eight human players with, then get RISK. It translates incredibly well from a board to console game and should provide you with a good challenge and a nice value for your gaming dollar.

Unlike other companies who are re-releasing board games for the PC with souped-up graphics but little else that's fresh (e.g. Monopoly), Hasbro has taken Risk to the next level, making a decent computer game out of a classic board game, without disturbing the tradition they are building upon -- and because of that, this release should be recognized as a worthy effort. Better multiplayer support and more stylistic documentation would have made this an even stronger title, but it's pretty good as is. If you really like Risk, you'll love this game. If you're only slightly interested or indifferent, you may be better off with the Duke Nukems, Quakes, and Red Alerts of the gaming world.

If you like the board game of Risk, you should enjoy this game. It is best when played in multiplayer mode with your buddies but it is playable in single player mode as well. Some nice options and different game modes should keep you interest for a bit. In the end, this game may not be the best choice for everyone but fans of the game should enjoy it.

In summary then, Hasbro have taken a classic board-game, put it on pc, and brought lots of new features to it, and I for one enjoyed it. It's addictive, highly replayable, and it looks quite smart too. If it had real-time combat we would have been talking a 90+ score but, sadly, it hasn't. So, wonderful as Risk is, it unfortunately isn't the Steel Empire for the 90s affair I was hoping against hope it would be. Now if you don't mind, I'm just going to retreat into a corner and cry my eyes out for a couple of days.

[The] in-depth gameplay will have to be enough to immerse you because Risk's visuals aren't very compelling. Aesthetically, Hasbro could have done better than its sparsely detailed 2D graphics. But, despite the absence of lavish eye-candy, Risk is a must-have for fans of the board game, and a good title for strategy game fans to try.

Hasbro Interactive has provided a near-perfect translation from the board game to the PlayStation. It has managed to preserve the style of play perfectly, without adding too many annoying new features to distract from Risk's sublime simplicity and speed.

It’s a shame, because the board game really is great, and this game could have been so good too. It’s just that with all the other PlayStation wargame titles around – where you control every aspect of the battles and watch your massed armies marching across detailed maps, rolling dice to decide which flag vanishes from a specific location just isn’t much fun!